


Some Light Typing Involved

by NancyBrown



Series: My Third Season [17]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Genderswap, Oblivious, Secret Organizations With The Name Stenciled On The Side Of The Car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kelsey gets a job with Torchwood's London branch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Light Typing Involved

**Author's Note:**

> For mlein on Tumblr, who is apparently the only other person on the planet who liked Kelsey in "Invasion of the Bane." Bit of fluff set shortly after [my fake third season](http://nancybrown.livejournal.com/tag/mythirdseason), written for Trope Bingo square: genderswap
> 
> Warnings: gleefully celebrates obliviousness raised to a fine art form  
> Spoilers: none

Kelsey was not going to look this gift horse in the mouth, no way, but sometimes she did wonder how she'd ended up here. She would chalk it up to the general weird that was her life, if she ever admitted her life was weird. Kelsey avoided weird. Her mum had told her too many stories about Aunt Fannie, who wound up in the loony bin for seeing faeries and worse, and Kelsey wanted none of that, thank you.

So when she'd been the only one in her house at Uni to spy the little blue troll-looking bloke with the long ears terrorising the floor, had she gone around admitting it? Not her. She'd screamed, dropped Volumes 4 through 9 of "Interesting Diseases of the Pancreas" on his ugly blue troll head, and gone back to her studies. Still got kicked out. Tossers.

She'd wound up working here, receptionist extraordinaire for Smith and Jones Consulting. That mad old bat Sarah Jane Smith had recommended her for the position, which was kind of her.

"But what do they do?" she'd asked, not willing to say no to a steady pay packet but not willing to say yes to something too unusual.

"Oh," said Sarah Jane vaguely. "They consult."

The nice lady Ms. Jones explained a little better, but not much better. "You answer the phones, you collect the post, you tell people who come 'round the front door that we're a dynamic consulting firm."

Mr. Smith, who ran the place except when Ms. Jones told him to stuff it, gave her more instruction: "If they're asking for me, take a message. If it's from Cardiff, take a message until they yell, then put it through. If it's from Glasgow, hold the phone away from your ear until Mrs. Carter's done shouting, then put it through. If someone's screaming, put it through."

Seemed there was a load of screaming, but Kelsey wasn't expected to deal with that, just route the calls.

Weird.

The post came twice a day, bills and parcels. Kelsey paid the bills on her approved list, bundled the rest and shipped them to an address in Cardiff to be dealt with there. For a consulting firm called Smith and Jones, they got an awful lot of calls and letters addressed to something called "Torchwood." Kelsey thought it might be something with drugs or the mafia.

She wasn't going to say nothing, not yet. She liked Ms. Jones (not to be confused with her sister Dr. Jones, who came to visit quite a lot, or her mother Mrs. Jones, who came to visit a little more often than Kelsey thought was normal, but whatever) and Mr. Smith was always good for a smile and a funny joke before work.

Kelsey didn't know what "work" was, not really. She knew the team kept odd hours. Dr. Wilde was here sometimes in the middle of the night. Ms. Karmakar would stay with her, and the few times Kelsey went into her lab, she had the weirdest appliances spread out on her workbench. Not like toaster ovens and electric kettles, oh no, but mixmasters and iPods that blinked and some of them (Kelsey thought she saw but so was never going to say) seemed to have extra bits stuck on that she couldn't see except when she crossed her eyes. Weird. And did she mention, weird?

Mr. Tanaka was the one who scared her just a little, though. She knew for a fact she'd seen him with a gun holster, and downstairs in the main office, his workstation always had diagrams of big, stupid guns. Drugs for the mafia. Had to be. But Kelsey was keeping her mouth shut.

Okay, so, yeah, the firm seemed a little shady, and their hours were bizarre. Things smelled rank down there sometimes when Dr. Wilde had something on her slab, Kelsey couldn't say what. Whenever there were weird lights in the sky that were _not_ weather balloons or atmospheric wacky (The Northern Lights? Again? No way.) the whole consulting group spilled out of the office and piled into their big stupid caravan. (It looked like that one Kelsey remembered on Bannerman Road, for that flower shop Mrs. Chandra had, Bloomin' Awful or whatever.) They'd zip off, and the next thing Kelsey knew, the weird lights would be gone and she'd have to put out a stack of letters addressed to the newspapers.

She'd opened a few once, and read letters to the editor all bemoaning teenagers and their obsession with laser pointers these days, scaring the kiddies and dogs with their blinking lights.

It wasn't all bad or anything. Her hours weren't expected to go into the middle of the night. When she wasn't answering phones or sabotaging the letters page, she had loads of free time to surf the web or chat on her mobile to her new bestie Christine. The money wasn't bad.

Also, she had some fine scenery to view. The head of the main office came to see Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones every so often. Kelsey was not into old guys over thirty, but she got a happy flutter every single time that man winked at her. Now, Mrs. Cassandra Hooper had not raised any fools, and Kelsey could spot a wedding ring from five kilometres away, so all she ever did back was wink, too, but she could not help but spend most of the rest of her day with a grin.

Too often, she wondered how this company was put together. The Captain didn't act much like a boss to Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones, more like a mate. Once they all went out for drinks, Kelsey too and even Dr. Jones. One thing led to another, and some blighter called the Captain a name, a freak, and the story they gave to the police after was that the bloke fell on Ms. Jones's fist seven times. Kelsey had a great deal of respect for Ms. Jones after that.

She liked her bosses. She liked her job.

Obviously that wasn't going to last.

The post was the post, and not everything was shipped proper-like. One day, like any other day, Kelsey got the post in and she was sorting. This bit for Mr. Smith. This bit for Cardiff. "Guns n' Ammo" for Mr. Tanaka. Something from that journal Ms. Karmakar was submitting an article to. Even two parcels, one from Sarah Jane Smith, and one with no return address and a peeling cover.

Well, it was like when the envelopes arrived unsealed or something. You had to look, right?

Kelsey didn't even have the cover half off when she got all warm, and it didn't quite hurt, and then it did, and suddenly she got a very bad feeling everywhere. She dropped the parcel and ran straight into the Ladies' to throw up, and then to pee, and straight away grasped her new problem.

She screamed. Well, later she said she didn't scream, but she screamed anyway.

Then she gathered herself up, cursed the nice weather outside that had led her to wear her nice black skirt and leggings with that peach sweater she loved, and she stalked right over to the door to the downstairs office. She didn't have the code, not officially, but she'd watched Mr. Smith loads and she knew it anyway. Kelsey punched in the numbers with fingers that were still slim, but not as slim as they had been, and she marched herself straight down the corridor, past the weird smells from Dr. Wilde's area, past the weird machines in Ms. Karmakar's area, past Mr. Tanaka's weird posters, and Ms. Jones's closed office door, and right into Mr. Smith's office.

"Who the hell are ... Kelsey?" Mr. Smith's face went through a whole kaleidoscope of expressions, and if one of them ended up laughing at her, he was going to fall on her fist a lot more than seven times.

"You are not paying me enough," Kelsey said, in her new lower voice, and she sat herself down on the chair opposite his desk and scowled at him until they bloody well switched her back.

***  
The End  
***


End file.
